The Wright Brothers Memorial Visitor Center was the "first building
to achieve nationwide recognition" designed by Ehrman Mitchell and Romaldo
Giurgola. [15] Although only a year old in
1957, the visitor center building type was not unfamiliar to either
young architect. Mitchell and Giurgola met in the office of Gilboy,
Bellante and Clauss, a Philadelphia firm commissioned to design the
1955-1956 visitor centers at Jamestown and Yorktown. [16] During Gilboy, Bellante and Clauss' association with
the Park Service, Mitchell and Giurgola became acquainted with John
B. Cabot, chief architect of the Eastern Office of Design and Construction.
In October 1957, Mitchell invited "Bill" Cabot to a cocktail party at
the family's new home in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. The two discussed
the prospect of Park Service work for the untested firm of Mitchell/Giurgola.
As Mitchell recalls, Cabot said, "Mitch, don't call me, push me, pressure
me . . . if I get work, I'll call you." [17]
A few months later, Cabot did call. When Mitchell questioned the Chief
Architect about his choice of virtually unknown architects for the prestigious
commission, Cabot said that the recent recession in the Eisenhower administration
affected his decision: "We got a directive to get every project on the
street. We had eight projects and seven architects." [18]
If Mitchell/Giurgola obtained the Wright Brothers Visitor Center contract
by being in the right place at the right time, the results they achieved
far surpassed the Park Service's expectations. The publicity the building
would receive in popular architectural journals over the next decade
resulted not from the architects' reputation as accomplished modernist
architects, but from the design of their building.

Born in Italy in 1920, Romaldo Giurgola was educated at the University
of Rome and, beginning in 1950, at Columbia University. He taught at
Cornell and served as an editor of Interiors magazine before
joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1958. Ehrman
B. Mitchell, Jr., a Pennsylvania native born in 1924, received his architectural
education at Penn and a position with a local firm soon after graduation.
Three years later he joined Gilboy, Bellante and Clauss of Philadelphia
and in 1951 became the supervisor of the firm's London office. His work
in England included coordinating with a large English consulting firm
in the design of military air fields. When Mitchell returned to Philadelphia
by the mid-1950s, he was experienced in running international architectural
firms. In 1957, he and Giurgola began planning their partnership, and
with the prospect of work from the Park Service, opened their own Philadelphia
office. Along with the visitor center commission, the firm designed
two other public buildings, several residences, and projects for competitions
during its first few years in business. [19]
When Giurgola became chairman of Columbia's architectural department
in 1966, the firm opened a second office in New York. By this time Mitchell/Giurgola
was a well-known architectural presence with an award-winning parking
garage and the much sought after commission for the A.I.A. headquarters
building in Washington, D.C., to its credit. [20] Ten years later, the partners would receive the A.I.A.
firm award, the organization's most distinguished award for an office.
The bicentennial year also marked the dedication of Mitchell/Giurgola's
second Park Service structure, the Liberty Bell Pavilion on the mall
across from Independence Hall. [21] Among the firm's many significant achievements are
the headquarters building of the United Fund in Philadelphia (1971),
of which one architectural historian declared "one has but to travel
up and down the east coast of the United States to see the influence
it has had on urban architecture." [22] Mitchell served as president of the A.I.A. in 1979-1980,
and in 1982, Giurgola was awarded the A.I.A. Gold Medal, the highest
honor bestowed upon individual architects. The Wright Brothers Visitor
Center was not only featured in the A.I.A. nomination, but as part of
a traveling "Gold Medal Exhibition" sent to schools across the nation.
[23] Architectural historians assessing the
firm's career look to this building as the beginning, and, as their
first significant work, a benchmark from which to judge future growth
and change. [24]

The Wright Brothers Visitor Center commission not only inspired Mitchell
and Giurgola, but, more importantly, proved a challenging design problem
worthy of national recognition. Like a handful of other park sites,
the Wright Brothers Memorial is a monument to scientific and technological
achievement. For the architects, as for the public, its value lay both
in its significance to the history of aviation and to the more personal
story of perseverance and experimentation leading to scientific progress.
During the 1950s, when many of the country's first modern airports were
under construction and the dream of space travel became a reality, aviation
facilities used modern technology and materials to create aesthetic
representations of flight, suggesting the limitless future of transportation.
One early example, the terminal building at Lambert-St. Louis Airport
designed by Minoru Yamasaki with George Hellmuth and Joseph Leinweber
(1953-1956), housed terminals in three concrete groin-vaulted buildings
with glass and aluminum forming the semi-circular walls of the remaining
space. By the beginning of the Mission 66 program, Eero Saarinen, creator
of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was busy with plans for
the TWA Terminal at Kennedy International Airport, New York (1956-1962),
and Dulles International Airport, Reston, Virginia (1958-1962). In November
1957, park employees sent bags of sand from Kill Devil Hills to Los
Angeles for the dedication of the city's "Jet-Age Expanded International
Airport." [25]

Along with social change, the early 1960s brought restlessness among
elite designers and a readiness for new leaders in the profession. In
1961, architectural critic Jan Rowan used the term Philadelphia School
to describe what he hoped would become an exciting new direction in
the practice of architecture. Architectural historians of today are
equally eager to group Mitchell/Giurgola in this innovative "school"
and to compare their work with the designs of Saarinen and others. As
Ehrman Mitchell recalls, he and his partner were not thinking about
modernist philosophy during their work at Wright Brothers, nor were
they particularly interested in striking out in a new direction. The
architects approached the Wright Brothers commission as a "natural response
to conditions of program" and were motivated by "the quest for modern
design." The overwhelming challenge was to portray the idea of flight
in a static form. Mitchell/Giurgola's unconsciousness of any deliberate
attempt to remake modernism was an early indication of their originality
and key to their successful practice.

In theoretical discussions following construction of the visitor center,
Mitchell and Giurgola explained how the firm was both modernist and
critical of the standard tenants of previous modern design. As important
as their built work, the theory and projects of Mitchell/Giurgola not
only influenced generations of student architects, but inspired the
flagging profession with new hope. Mitchell and Giurgola considered
themselves '"inclusivist'" in their architectural theory and were convinced
that a '"partial vision'" in design presented a more acceptable view
of reality than the elitist and exclusionary practices of past modern
architecture. [26] The young architects began
their career at a time when severe modernist architecture seemed to
lack the vim and vigor of real life. The work of Philadelphia architect
Louis I. Kahn offered exactly what was missing: a sense of order and
a reason for being. Kahn passed on his architectural theories in lectures
at the University of Pennsylvania and in his buildings; construction
began on the University's Richards Laboratories in 1958, the year Giurgola
joined the faculty. Energized by Kahn's work and their shared experience
at PennMitchell, Giurgola, Robert Venturi, Robert Geddes, and
other young architects emerged as a new force in the profession. By
the mid-1960s this "Philadelphia School" was considered on the cutting
edge of architectural design. As Rowan described it, the Philadelphia
School responded to the modernist work of such icons as Richard Neutra
and Mies van der Rohe. In place of the abstract forms and universal
principles of the previous generation, the younger architects gravitated
toward Kahn's more personal and sensitive design philosophy. The close
relationship between Mitchell/Giurgola and Kahn is illustrated by the
writings of Romaldo Giurgola, who not only became an ardent follower,
but a scholar of Kahn's work. Closer study of Giurgola's writings helps
to show how Kahn influenced the firm's attitudes toward place, community,
and landscape and their expression through the use of light and attention
to building materials. [27]

Although their first major building, Mitchell/Giurgola considered the
Wright Brothers Visitor Center an important example of their architectural
philosophy; the design is clearly a response to the methods of their
predecessors and to the new possibilities outlined by Kahn. In a 1961
reference to the design methodology employed at Wright Brothers, Giurgola
explained that the "order will be the participation in the environment
of the building's special theme, not the imposition of abstract forms."
[28] The same year, when interviewed for Progressive
Architecture, Giurgola spoke about the role "subjective experience"
played in the design process, a subject considered taboo to the blatantly
objective proponents of the International Style. [29]
The article included a full-page detail photograph of a segment of the
visitor center illustrating the contrast of wood panels and concrete,
close-ups of the entrance and ceremonial terraces, and smaller views
of the overall building and plan. With the exception of Quarry Visitor
Center at Dinosaur, completed in 1958, the Wright Brothers Visitor Center
received the most media coverage of any National Park Service project
of its type.

The Philadelphia office of Mitchell/Giurgola, Architects became MGA
Partners in 1990. The principals of this successor firmAlan Greenberger,
Daniel Kelley, and Robert Shumanworked with the founders beginning
in the 1970s. MGA Partner's current projects include the Gateway Visitor
Center on Independence Mall, a new facility slated for completion in
1999, the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert in Rancho Mirage,
California, and a theater and drama center for Indiana University in
Bloomington. The firm also inherited records and drawings from past
projects, most of which have been transferred to the Architectural Archives
at the University of Pennsylvania. The New York office retains the original
name "Mitchell/Giurgola." In 2000, Ehrman Mitchell is retired and living
in Philadelphia. Romaldo Giurgola lives in Australia, where he is a
partner of Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp Architects of Canberra and
Sydney.